23...and Johnny Five

In my family, it's a requirement that you name pretty much every inanimate object you spend loads of quality time with.  This little goofball practice used to be reserved almost exclusively for cars.

Over the years, one or the other of us has driven Sherman the Wonder Tank, Tootsie, Melinda, Elmo, Sport, Cabernet and many others.

While technology has been subtly seeping into every facet of our lives, more and more things have been acquiring names.  The biggest category?  Computers.

My mom has had scads of computers.  I think I've had three: my original tower, my laptop, and my HP desktop.  The original tower was called something like Sherman the Wonder Tank, but I can't remember the exact name.  My laptop was Stitch, after my favorite Disney cartoon character.  The HP, over time, became Johnny Five.

Y'know...from Short Circuit?

Recently, Johnny Five became ill.  He took my pictures hostage and refused to start up.  It's been a few months since he started having his episodes, and at least a full month since he died for good.

Or so I thought.

After sending Johnny Five over to The Grumps' house to hang out with my momma for a while, he's back up and running, and he didn't even lose any of the information I was so concerned about.

In fact, he came home this past weekend, and I'm typing on him right now.

Welcome back, friend.  No disassemble Johnny Five.

Resurrected

It wasn't easy.

In fact, it was a rather large pain in the you-know-what.

But my momma was able to resurrect my computer long enough to at least recover every single, solitary picture it had been holding hostage.  Every.  Last.  One.

My inner monologue at this point goes something like this: "Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou." 

And that's not all.  It seems the computer may be salvageable as well.

Heaving a huge sigh of relief here, folks.  I hadn't even noticed I'd been holding my breath.

Mourning the Loss

Well, it's been a good four or five years since the purchase of my HP desktop computer.  We've had some good times, and we've had some spats.

But now it's time to say goodbye.

The stubborn thing won't even power up anymore.  Methinks the hard drive is fried.  How?  Not a clue.  The Hubbs updated iTunes to the newest version last week, and all of a sudden the PC is dead.

Sigh. 

At this point, I'm just crossing my fingers that there's a way to get the last two years' pictures off that hard drive before it kicks the bucket for good.  I know I should have moved them to my external hard drive, but guess what?  I procrastinated.  Yeah.  That worked out well.

I feel slightly nauseous when I think about exactly which pictures were on that PC instead of the handy-dandy external hard drive.  The Princess swimming, laughing, playing, looking at the camera.  Probably every single picture since I lost my last job.  That means I have no remaining photographic evidence of those 9 heavenly months spent at home with The Hubbs and The Princess before starting this new gig.  Last Halloween?  Gone.  Birthdays?  Gone.  Last Christmas?  Gone.  Two entire years of photos?  G-O-N-E, gone.

Please, oh, please, let them be recoverable.

Because, honestly, the computer has no sentimental value.  The pictures, however, are a different story.  I'll be mourning the loss of those for quite some time.